The Tavern

Im an elf lover and I still hate u guys for HE removal, but now Id like to talk about Vp. Today they suck, In all meanings. Their gameplay is what you call "grinding" : to do tomb you need to wait for bloodless, kill some mummies, return to crypt or vaults if you have no bottled blood, drink blood, wait for you hp to regen and blood to end, and then repeat. Their extended game is awful and extremely uncomfortable. Batform is literally useless(1 turn cast time and no defences after it). They are designed to be something between living and undead but in the end they have all vulnerabilities from both while obtaining nearly 0 strenghts.

So, I suggest next Vp design

- Vampires are undead: this means they have rC+ rN+++ rPois+ (turning into immune while bloodless) Torment and Rot immunity and holy & dispel vulnerability
- While bloodless and near bloodless, they REGENERATE at a slow rate like ghouls and obtain major stealth bonuses and poison immunity (hexes and spellcasting bonuses maybe) and their bite vs living heals and satiates them
- While alive and full they regenerate VERY fast, like trolls (minor slay bonus maybe) and their bite deals more damage than while bloodless (but doesnt heal)
- While just not thirsty their bite heals at 50% of bloodless rate and gains 50% of alive extra damage and so on
- Batform is instant and fail rate is 0%
- Satiation decreases (and rises from bite) much more slowly to prevent chaotic gameplay
- Regen spell is taboo but amulet works normally

To balance this a bit I suggest to cut combat apts and heal from bite a bit. Maybe cut stealth apt to zero BUT make stealth bonus multiply your stealth by 2 or 3 gradually decreasing to 1 as you gain more blood

You don't need torment immunity for Tomb, you can always worship Makhleb, batform is intended for escapes not combat.

IMO Vampires should have less blood states, 3 should be enough.

At the very least I feel like Vp interface for blood potions is quite bad-annoying that you can't use them with 'e'. And of course extremely annoying to be in a branch like spider, run out of blood, and have to fuck off somewhere else to get blood bottles before you return to and finish spider.

nvm, deleted.

kuniqs wrote:IMO Vampires should have less blood states, 3 should be enough.

It was recently reduced from 6-7 to 4. You'd say they should stop healing at thirsty, or that they shouldn't gain regen when full?

Just bring it down to 2 states, alive or undead and let the switch freely in between or with a Exaust/Drain cost. Are we really still pretending that this is not already the case? Can vampires starve? Food is still in the game to prevent players from sitting around forever, yet here it is, a race that revolves on nothing but sitting around waiting for a meaningless blood state that adds nothing gameplay wise.

I think vampires are one of those things that are easier to restart completely over from scratch than to rework from their current situation. Their special thing is a kind of micromanagement this game tends to avoid. It's very intricate, there are many bonuses to keep account of, and it requires a lot of item management.

Free swapping between two states also seems like a good idea to me. It avoids tedium.

But do we even need that? Vampires could just be undead that get bad mutations (berserkitis, blurry eyes, slowness, screaming...) if they don't kill (living?) things. Remove the food clock. Remove blood potions creation, keep blood potions as a rare item you find on the floor and you can use in emergency situations or in Tomb. Leave self-healing with stabs.

Has anyone else here played a Vampire Transmuter? It's one of the most hilariously awful things in Crawl; you want to stay out of Full so you can batform, but you also have to stay out of Thirsty so you can actually use your transmutations. It's really painful because you need to actively drink blood, but not too much or you'll accidentally land in Full. Also, if you fight while too close to Thirsty, you can accidentally punt yourself into it because of the Dreaded Hunger Costs when transmuting, which causes your spell to immediately expire because being transmuted while thirsty is degenerate or something.

Shtopit wrote: But do we even need that? Vampires could just be undead that get bad mutations (berserkitis, blurry eyes, slowness, screaming...) if they don't kill (living?) things.

Ghouls are a thing already.

Remove the food clock. Remove blood potions creation, keep blood potions as a rare item you find on the floor and you can use in emergency situations or in Tomb. Leave self-healing with stabs.

And then add a potion of porridge to the game so spriggans aren't left out.

Doesnt wrote:Has anyone else here played a Vampire Transmuter? It's one of the most hilariously awful things in Crawl; you want to stay out of Full so you can batform, but you also have to stay out of Thirsty so you can actually use your transmutations. It's really painful because you need to actively drink blood, but not too much or you'll accidentally land in Full. Also, if you fight while too close to Thirsty, you can accidentally punt yourself into it because of the Dreaded Hunger Costs when transmuting, which causes your spell to immediately expire because being transmuted while thirsty is degenerate or something.

I play vampire transmuters, its the biggest excuse to worship kiku, which removes most of the annoyances of playing a vampire(no blood farms, always alive, statue form + kiku's torment resistance makes torment waste a turn trying to remove 1% of your hp).

Shard1697 wrote:And of course extremely annoying to be in a branch like spider, run out of blood, and have to fuck off somewhere else to get blood bottles before you return to and finish spider.

This is THE reason I don't like playing vampires.

Can someone tell me which corpses vampires can drain and which not? Earlier I thought it was based on poisonous/non-poisonous corpses, but this is not the case, since vampires can drain kobolds but not tarantellas. Is the distinction insect / non-insect?

Both inedible corpses and non-drainable corpses should be replaced by plain corpses. There's no reason, logically or realistically for them to exist.

Of course, one can remove food totally, but that would be too sensible.

Edit:
From a quick skim of the code, it looks like the check is: "monster has cold blood or monster has warm blood". Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
(food.cc)

Code:: static bool _vampire_consume_corpse(item_def& corpse) { ASSERT(you.species == SP_VAMPIRE); ASSERT(corpse.base_type == OBJ_CORPSES); ASSERT(corpse.sub_type == CORPSE_BODY); const monster_type mons_type = corpse.mon_type; if (!mons_has_blood(mons_type)) { mpr("There is no blood in this body!"); return false; }

(mon-util.cc)

Code:: bool mons_has_blood(monster_type mc) { return mons_class_flag(mc, M_COLD_BLOOD) || mons_class_flag(mc, M_WARM_BLOOD); }

It's a totally separate distinction of "bloodless" which is not really clear at all. I would much rather if it was just "you can drink from all edible corpses" so you don't have to learn a whole new list of edible monsters when you're playing as one specific species. Or all corpses, like ghouls!

Also as long as we're talking about all the issues of ghouls, why can they drink directly from a corpse in the first place? It leads to stuff like... you start to drink a corpse, then another monster walks into view, you stop drinking because you got scared or some shit, and then all the blood drains out of the corpse you were drinking from(???) and is wasted. Why not only let Vp drink via potions and sidestep this issue? It's not like other species have a slightly different system for eating corpses without butchering them, they just gotta butcher em if they wanna eat em.

How about removing the blood management system and giving Vampires SInv, rPois, rC, rTorm, Regen+, Stlth+ and batform? Removing the need to drink blood altogether is also a possibility, as branches like Spider are extremely annoying under the current system. Very few people seem to like the blood management system. Mummies already don't eat and are undead so there is precedent for this.

tabstorm wrote:How about removing the blood management system and giving Vampires SInv, rPois, rC, rTorm, Regen+, Stlth+ and batform? Removing the need to drink blood altogether is also a possibility, as branches like Spider are extremely annoying under the current system. Very few people seem to like the blood management system. Mummies already don't eat and are undead so there is precedent for this.

And then

Vampires are now a relatively uninteresting species in terms of gameplay, feeling somewhat like mummies but with greater stats and apts. Their batform not withstanding, this particular mythology reference isn't particularly interesting.

Vampires can quaff potions and have good aptitudes.
So it is Gh for melee, Vp for magic/hybrid and Mu for hard game.

Elf lover wrote:
tabstorm wrote:How about removing the blood management system and giving Vampires SInv, rPois, rC, rTorm, Regen+, Stlth+ and batform? Removing the need to drink blood altogether is also a possibility, as branches like Spider are extremely annoying under the current system. Very few people seem to like the blood management system. Mummies already don't eat and are undead so there is precedent for this.

And then
Vampires are now a relatively uninteresting species in terms of gameplay, feeling somewhat like mummies but with greater stats and apts. Their batform not withstanding, this particular mythology reference isn't particularly interesting.

if bad features are what keeps a species in the game.. perhaps bad features are actually good.

But seriously, this would not even be a fitting removal commit, the only thing vampires share with mummies are the set of undead resistances.

Elf, was that a reference to HE removal or MD removal?

What if vampires had an ability to convert nutrition into a potion of blood (maybe at the cost of 1 HP from the self-inflicted wound)? Players would still need to collect blood if they wanted to stay Alive, but no longer would there be an incentive to stand around waiting for nutrition to timeout while their potions of blood dry up.

Just make it so you can switch from bloodless to living and vice versa from the abilities panel and making bloodless->living cause drain. Boom, tedium gone.

dynast wrote:Just bring it down to 2 states, alive or undead and let the switch freely in between or with a Exaust/Drain cost. Are we really still pretending that this is not already the case? Can vampires starve? Food is still in the game to prevent players from sitting around forever, yet here it is, a race that revolves on nothing but sitting around waiting for a meaningless blood state that adds nothing gameplay wise.

I've been barking up the tree to at least allow Vp to drop blood levels at will for about 3+ years now. I have suggested among other things, a special ability, that sublimation of blood could cause a lowering of blood level or just a straight up toggle. If food ever gets removed the toggle is about the only thing that makes sense there.

The Tavern

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